Trouble In Paradise: Music and Los Angeles, 1945-1975

The exhibit features iconic images, a cross-section of ephemera (album art, handbills, concert posters, etc.), music, and filmed interviews with key figures in the scene. Rather than an exhaustive overview, Trouble In Paradise focuses on the tensions between alluring myths of Southern California paradise and the realities of social struggle that characterized the years following WWII.

Genres of music highlighted in the exhibit include surf rock, jazz, R&B, Laurel Canyon folk rock, the Sunset Strip rock scene and the East L.A. Chicano sound, all of which helped shape the most diverse and influential music scenes in all of America during this socially tumultuous period of L.A. History.